Azula & Unpopular Fandom Opinions

[redbrunja]

Okay, so I'm doing avatar_contest because I want to get back into the habit of writing for Avatar and honestly, I'm sorry I broke up with that show the way I did.

The last couple of prompts have both reminded me of Azula and you know, the more time goes by the more I realize I am really, really disappointed in how her arc turned out. Even thought I know that she was going crazy because of Mai and Ty Lee betraying her, it still read a lot like another women losing her sanity when when she got power.

I think that Zuko leaving Mai (what was presumably) a really thoughtful letter is a good way to break up with someone in general. Additionally, I think telling her face to face would have been dumb and given Azula a chance to stop him.

It is okay that Ozai was really a faceless villain. That was his role and we didn't need to know/care about his motivations the way we did Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee.

Also, you know Zuko's scar? That is not a symbol of Zuko and Katara's love and when Zuko looks at it he's not going to think about saving Katara; he's going to think about how two of the four members of his family have tried to kill him.

Comments

Re: Long comment, sorry.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

This is true.

Re: Long comment, sorry.

[mzminola.livejournal.com]

In the essay she linked me to in an above thread, Suki we can't use because the argument is the girls are great, but the older women are crazy.
Though since we're arguing over Azula's crazyness, I don't see why we're dealing only with an older generation, and not her peers.

I didn't mention the Avatars because of the line "Avatar Kyoshi, who gets considerably less screentime than Avatar Roku, and the airbender Avatar who only appears in the finale." They'd already been dismissed due to screentime imbalance.

Re: Long comment, sorry.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I think they were talking about patterns - in season three especially you have a lot of older male characters who are badass - Iroh has his prison break-out arc, you have Piando (?), you see more of Ozai, and then you have the entire male order of the lotus, Roku being trained by all male benders, and that's contrasted with Azula's older henchladies who are used often as the butt joke and Hama, who's crazy and evil.

I think how they made Azula go crazy and their choices NOT to bring back the fortuneteller and the herbalist from season 1 into the Order of the Lotus were unusually bad gender dynamics for this show.

I honestly think Suki would stand up as a much better counterpoint to Azula if we actually saw her fighting and leading her team in season 3. While Suki IS the leader of the kyoshi warriors, she spends a LOT of time separated from them.

Yeah, you can get into plot considerations like time and needing to have Sokka and Suki be a bit isolated for their romance, but still...